“Are you expecting pyrotechnics?” she asked.
“No, no, the extinguisher’s just a delivery vehicle. Do you feel these?” Four smaller tubes fed into the elephant tube. “These lead back to cylinders of Freon, which I secured around the base of the fire extinguisher.”
“Freon? Isn’t that what they use in air conditioning?”
“Exactly. When one of those bottles hits you, it feels like liquid ice. And that’s the point. Mr. Snyder must be able to excite his atomic make-up enough to loosen the bonds that, you know, hold him together. Extreme cold would make that a lot more difficult.”
“So, if he tries to pass through one of us, we hit him with this.”
“I set up the Freon canisters so that once the triggers are depressed, they’ll lock open. Then it’s simply a matter of pulling the pin on the extinguisher, aiming the tube, and squeezing. The compressed air in the extinguisher should shoot the Freon twenty, twenty-five feet, at least.”
Scott was surprised to feel Janis’s lips against his.
“See, you didn’t need your laser,” she said once she’d sat back. “This is brilliant.”
“Thanks.” As he returned the contraption to his backpack, he stared around at the wall of darkness.
“Nothing in my perimeter,” Janis answered before he could ask. “And Chief McDermott is still at home.” Her hands slipped into his. “Do you think Mr. Snyder is like us, a Special?”
“He has to be,” Scott said.
“I wonder why he wasn’t recruited into the last class of Champions.”
“It sounds like it was a smaller organization back then,” Scott said. “Less funding. And if Mr. Snyder wasn’t using his powers openly or ever—I know they would have scared the heck out of me—there would have been no way for the Program to learn about him. He would have fallen through the cracks.”
Janis grunted in agreement. “I guess it’s just hard to believe, given how omnipresent…”
Her words trailed off into silence.
“Oh, my God,” she said at last.
“What?”
“I can’t believe I never made the connection.” She laughed once.
“You’re killing me. What?”
She told him. Scott listened with a kind of vacant shock, but as the perfect logic of it fell into place, he gave his own short, barking laugh. He then struggled with how to incorporate the new information into their plan. But Janis had already figured that out too, apparently.
She leaned forward, eyes dark in their intensity.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” she said.
Janis listened to Scott’s footfalls fade off through the trees. He was shining his flashlight through the fabric of his shirt so it wouldn’t throw as strong a beam. When she could no longer see or hear him, Janis touched her fingers to her lips, where Scott had left his parting kiss.
Let me know when you get there, she thought toward him.
I will, he replied. Stay safe.
Turning to her right, Janis reached toward Chief McDermott’s house to make sure he was inside. Scott was right. The dense foliage, all of it radiating complex patterns of energy, did interfere with her perceptual abilities. It was how Jasper had surprised them that morning.
At last she picked out Chief McDermott’s signature.
Still home, she thought. Good.
The last thing they needed was the police chief patrolling the streets. Since time was of the definite essence, she had advised Scott to stick to pavement once he was clear of the woods.
All right, now to refocus.
Janis closed her eyes and centered herself. The shock of her revelation had compromised her psychic perimeter as well as her vigilance over it. She pushed energy back into the perimeter with special attention to the arc Mr. Snyder was most likely to pass through.
Looks like all’s quie—
The thought sheared off. Something was moving into the perimeter, west of the arc. Janis tried to listen above the wall of insect calls, but the movement was too distant. She lifted Scott’s pack onto one shoulder and concentrated. She didn’t want to be fooled by another raccoon or a deer. But she wasn’t picking up an animal. The signature was human and…
Janis’s heart slammed twice in her chest. She fought to catch her breath.
Need to stay centered.
She refocused on the ochre-colored signature. The pulse was moving in a line toward Chief McDermott’s house, and Janis was badly out of position. She began to scramble. The intercept point would be much closer to the police chief’s house than she had wanted, but she couldn’t worry about that now.
She just had to make sure she beat Mr. Snyder there.
Clearing a dense thicket, Janis picked up her pace. A branch caught her face, drawing red-hot lines across her cheek. She squinted against the pain. The intercept point was still fifty yards ahead.
Swinging Scott’s pack around to the front of her, she felt for the zipper. She didn’t know whether she would need his contraption—which was brilliant—but she wanted it in hand just in case. Her finger and thumb were closing on the pack’s metal tab when she flew sideways.
“Ungh!”
A tree caught her left shoulder. Pain shot the length of her arm to her fingers. Another tree clubbed her knee. Janis lost her grip on Scott’s backpack. When her flight came to a violent end, she found herself face down.
Groaning, she raised her head. The woods were a spinning blur. Two seconds had passed between take off and landing, and it was now dawning on Janis that someone had slammed into her.
Heavy footsteps sounded behind her. A calloused hand seized the back of her neck before sliding roughly around to her chin, lifting it.
Janis tried to concentrate into the astral plane—the plane she could control—but her brain was too rattled from her ride through the trees. The lines she needed to push energy through flickered in and out.
A blade found her throat, its tip feeling for her jugular vein.
25
Scott broke from the trees and onto the asphalt road—Barnacle Drive—not far from where he and Janis had crossed. He pushed the flashlight into one front pocket while pulling the map from the other.
He quickly found where he was and then eyed the most direct route to downtown. The route he settled on would take him past Chief McDermott’s street. For a moment, Scott considered checking in with Janis but decided she needed to concentrate. She would warn him if the police chief moved.
Scott returned the folded-up map to his pocket and started into a run. He used the long, efficient strides of someone out for exercise. Thanks to his Champions training, he could now run a sub-six-minute mile—something that had once seemed as impossible to him as, well, dating Janis Graystone.
When he reached Chief McDermott’s street, he peeked up it. Beyond the few street lights, the road ended in darkness.
Two blocks later, Scott veered left onto Jay Street, a residential street that ran straight south. It would take him a few blocks east of downtown. By now, Scott’s strong breaths were in synch with his strides. Four strides to each in-out cycle. He felt good, even if he still couldn’t believe where he was going. But everything Janis had said made perfect sense. It fit. As did her plan. And with Mr. Snyder not expected to make his move until later, they had time to execute it.
The drone of a car engine grew behind Scott. He edged closer to the left curb. He knew his cars and didn’t have to peek to know it was not a police cruiser.
Sedan of some kind, though.
The asphalt beneath Scott’s slapping sneakers began to illuminate. His shadow stretched and then shot out in front of him as the car’s brights snapped on.
Must see me.
The sound of the engine rose an octave.
Huh?
Scott jumped onto a front lawn and spun just as the car’s front tire rim blew white sparks from the curb. Backpedaling, Scott lost his footing. The maroon sedan careened back into the road.
Holy crap!
Scott landed on the seat of his pants. He just tried to run me down!
Brake lights spilled red over the road as the car teetered into a sharp U-turn. For an instant a streetlight backlit the driver, and Scott could see that whoever he was, he was not Chief McDermott.
Janis grimaced as the blade’s cool tip pushed between her windpipe and a thick vein. The man holding the blade was practiced. He had positioned the tip using the blunt edge of the knife. It would only take a quick twist, though.
“Who are you?” a gruff voice asked. “What’re you doing here?”
“We … we came to help someone.” The man’s grip, which smelled like damp earth and leather, smushed her words together. Janis heard his breathing change as he looked around for her accomplices.
“We?” he said.
“If you let me up, I’ll explain. I’m not armed.”
When the blade didn’t move, Janis became convinced that her and Scott’s theories on the man had been wrong. Not a benevolent victim seeking justice, but a cold-blooded killer. She gritted her teeth in concentration, but the damned astral plane just wouldn’t focus for her.
“Speak,” the man said at last.
The blade popped from her trachea. The hand moved from jaw to shoulder and pulled her rudely onto her back. Janis squinted up. A man’s silhouette loomed there, a beard clumping around his mouth. Slowly, his energy took shape, resolving into something familiar.
“Giles Snyder,” she said.
He had been shifting side to side like an edgy animal, peering toward the police chief’s house, but now he stopped.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m the only one who knows you’re here. Well, my friend knows, too. How we know isn’t important. What’s important is that we know about the radiation experiments. We know they made your daughter sick. We know you tried to get help for her. We … we know about your wife.” As the words spilled from Janis’s mouth, her eyes brimmed with tears. The astral plane bloomed around her. “Mr. Snyder, we know you’re innocent.”
As he stared at her, Janis thought she felt something unlock inside him.
“And we know why you’re back in Murder Creek…” Now that she had control of the lines connecting them, she could risk some boldness. She pushed herself up to sitting. “You came back to take revenge on Dr. Fields, the man who administered the poison to your daughter. You’re here tonight to do the same to Chief McDermott, the man who murdered your wife.”
The arm holding the knife had drifted to Mr. Snyder’s side, but now it stiffened, the blade pointing toward her.
“But listen to me.” Janis’s throbbing knee threatened to fail as she stood. “If you kill Chief McDermott, you forfeit any chance of being exonerated of what happened thirty years ago. We know people who will testify to what went on at that camp. And there are other people who would be very interested in what you can do. They might even be able to keep you from doing time for Fields.”
Janis allowed her words to hang between them so that she could feel his reaction. A cloud of confusion swirled through the man, resolving into sudden clarity and fresh suspicion. Before he could act on that suspicion, Janis dug a hand into her pocket and retrieved the ring.
“This belonged to your wife,” she said. “You dropped it on the beach.”
Mr. Snyder held out a hand, and Janis placed the ring onto his palm. He raised his hand toward his face, staring closely at the wedding band. Then he closed his fingers around it and pressed the side of his fist to his lips.
“But for us to help you, the killing has to stop now,” Janis said. “That’s the condition.”
Mr. Snyder snuffled once and pushed the ring into a front pocket. “Fraid it’s too late for that.”
He was staring toward the police chief’s house. A pair of outdoor lights twinkled through the trees like distant stars. Chief McDermott was still inside; Janis could feel him. But…
Cold sweat sprouted from her back.
He wasn’t alone anymore. The ochre-colored energy, the one Janis had been pursuing, was inside, too. It didn’t belong to Mr. Snyder. It had never belonged to Mr. Snyder.
“I can’t control her no more,” Mr. Snyder said.
Two gunshots cracked in the night, followed by an aging man’s scream.
The high beams hit Scott’s glasses with diamond-like brilliance. He knew before it happened that the car was going to jump the curb. He scrambled to his feet and made for the side of a house. The beams leaped above him, lighting up tree tops. The car’s metal undercarriage ground over cement before the beams fell again. Behind him, Scott could hear sod tearing from the earth in tire-spun chunks.
That’s gonna be me if I don’t get out of the open.
Scott skirted some bushes flanking the front corner of the house and nearly ran face-first into a tall wooden fence. The fence was set back, hard to see from the front yard. It abutted the neighbor’s backyard fence.
No, no, no…
Scott peeked around. The fishtailing car latched onto the lawn. The engine screamed. The piercing lights swung back toward him. For a paralyzing moment, Scott wondered if, when the car went to plow into him, he would be able to jump high enough for it to pass harmlessly beneath him.
Are you insane?
Scott ran alongside the fence instead. The car changed course. Scott’s breaths cycled madly, never filling his lungs enough to allow him to shout for help. Everything was happening at the speed of sound.
The engine screamed again as its wheels spun over the damp grass. So close. Scott braced for impact, the crunching and crushing of bones. And then he caught a break. The backyard fences did not adjoin. A narrow space separated them, about two feet across.
Scott’s right foot planted hard into the turf, and he shoved himself sideways. He retracted his foot just as the car slammed into the opening. Shards of wood pelted Scott’s thrown-up forearm, but he hadn’t stopped moving. He skipped laterally, making for the dark end of the channel, the fences brushing both the front and back of his shirt.
The car whined into reverse.
Grunting, Scott tried to speed up, to take larger leaps. But the channel simply would not end.
C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!
A car door opened and slammed shut.
For the first time, it occurred to Scott that his assailant might have a gun. And here he was, about as hard to hit as a life-sized paper target in a shooting range. He peeked back toward the opening.
The silhouette of a slender man stepped into view.
Legs bowed, the man extended an arm.
It was Chief McDermott’s second scream that shattered Janis’s paralysis. She had never heard such terror. She limped into a run, her abilities mapping out a route through the lurid tangle of woods.
“Wait!” Mr. Snyder called from behind her. “She’ll … she’ll hurt you!”
Janis didn’t break stride. She veered slightly to stoop and catch a strap of Scott’s pack. She slung the whole thing over her aching shoulder, which her adrenaline seemed to be anesthetizing.
Mr. Snyder’s next warning faded behind her.
Janis worked it out as she ran. Whatever Chastity had meant by her final postcard to Markus, she had not died. Not in a literal sense, anyway. She was the one who had slipped in and out of houses and killed the dogs. She was the pale flash Janis had seen in Jasper’s memory, flying at her through the tent flap. She was the one who had murdered Dr. Fields.
She was the Snyder with the abilities. Not her father. He was merely her protector.
I can’t control her no more.
Janis sped up. Out ahead, she could see the glow of illuminated windows. In the seconds since the last scream, the house had gone deathly quiet. She slowed as she broke from the woods into Chief McDermott’s backyard. A sliding glass door led onto a back deck. Janis knew it was the means by which Chastity had entered. Her eyes swept the windows, her breaths tearing in and out. Beyond the glass and diaphanous curtains, nothing moved.
But Janis coul
d feel her inside.
She blurred herself before crossing the yard. She crept up the steps of the deck. Beyond the sliding glass door, light from a hallway off to the right revealed a dark wood-paneled den. Trophy fish and buck heads adorned the walls, their glazed eyes staring darkly.
Janis shifted her focus to the glass. The energy lines were brittle, as though a hard tap would shatter the whole thing. And it was infused with the same ochre-colored energy Janis had felt at the beach house and over Dr. Fields’s side door. Janis tested the door handle. Locked.
She swung the pack around to the front of her and withdrew Scott’s creation, inspecting the cylinders and tubes.
The contraption was heavy, but Janis saw that Scott had built a handle onto the backside of the extinguisher. Gripping it underhanded, she used her other hand to hold the nozzle aloft. Scott had also used bike brake parts so that, once the pin was pulled, the extinguisher’s trigger could be activated by way of a thumb switch on the handle’s right side.
She tested the switch. It worked.
With a telekinetic thought, she popped the door’s lock.
With a second thought and a deep breath, the door slid open.
26
Something in the man’s hand flashed and Scott crashed to the ground. The report whip-cracked the air.
Scott stared along the lengths of his outstretched legs. His right shoe was snagged in a tangle of roots erupting from the ground. To either side, the fences ended. He had cleared them. He had tripped into the woods that grew dark and wild behind him.
A second shot cracked the air.
Scott jerked and yanked his snared leg until his foot popped from the shoe. He rolled to one side, to safety, heartbeats slamming in the base of his skull. He gained his feet. Nothing hurt. He hadn’t been hit. His hands grasped for trees as though to pull the concealing woods around him.
I’ve got no damn offense. More than ever, he wished for his armored suit and high-tech laser. The week before, he had requested permission to take them along.
XGeneration (Book 5): Cry Little Sister Page 18